Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
PRESENT DAY
You hungry? I’m making pizza. His sort-of invitation repeats in my head.
Will disappears from the doorway without waiting for an answer, and I stand to follow him, moving into the kitchen.
I’m curious, I admit it. It’ll only piss me off, but maybe it’s better if I know who she is. Maybe they’re serious.
Instead, I find the kitchen empty except for Will.
Already, he has the island lined with ingredients. Pizza dough, shredded mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, banana peppers, green olives, green peppers, sausage.
On the stove, a small pot of homemade tomato sauce simmers, filling the air with the rich, heavy scent of garlic and oregano. My stomach growls again.
My eyes scan the empty hall, his closed bedroom door. Maybe he’s planning to go back for round two. Maybe they just need to refuel.
“Looking for someone?” Will’s voice interrupts my thoughts.
My cheeks heat. “Nope.” I walk around the island, preparing to help, but he stops me with a hand held up. “What?”
He makes a look like, yeah, okay, and shakes his head. “I’ve got this.”
“I can help,” I offer, tying my hair back into a low ponytail. “You bought the ingredients. I should at least do something.”
“Yeah, normally I’d agree, but…” He pauses, his blue eyes going soft, as if he’s not focusing on anything at all.
His gaze follows the line of my neck, then bounces back to my face.
“I’ve seen you cook, remember?” He looks away.
I scowl. “I think I can manage a pizza, Will.”
He shakes his head, shooing me back with a flick of his wrist. “You go sit on that side of the island and watch a professional work.”
“A professional? That’s a stretch.” I stand my ground, moving in front of him, fully prepared to argue. The walkway between the island and the counter is narrow. When I step forward, there’s nowhere for him to go without brushing against me.
His hand flexes out to the side in my periphery. He doesn’t move otherwise.
Neither do I.
He’s so infuriating.
“You’re an accountant, not a chef.”
Will tilts his head, a slow, cocky grin flaring on his lips before it fades entirely. He waits, blinking, eyes skating across my features as if he’s memorizing them. Learning something wholly new and strangely captivating.
When he speaks again, his words are slow and deliberate. “You can sit over there and let me make our dinner. Or…we can just keep having this staring contest and both die of starvation. Choice is yours.”
I release a breath through my nose, then turn away. “Fine. If you don’t want my help, do it yourself.”
From my seat on the other side of the island, I watch as he splits the dough into two separate crusts and works them with a rhythmic pressure—push, fold, turn, repeat.
Slow and methodical. There’s something intimate about the way he’s shaping the crusts, the heat of the kitchen, and the way his hands seem to know just what to do.
They’re nice hands.
I swallow. Look away.
What is wrong with me? Who cares about his hands?
I’m just hungry, that’s all. And thinking about what his hands were doing earlier.
My eyes flick back to the hall. She’s being extremely quiet in there. Maybe she already left.
“Did you wash your hands?” My voice is too sharp in the quiet space. It interrupts his rhythm. He comes back to my eyes in a daze, like he was lost in thought and just remembered where he is.
“Of course I washed my hands. I’m not an animal.” His expression is strange, like he’s trying to figure something out. “You keep looking at my door.”
A lump lodges itself in my throat. “Was I? I’m just…daydreaming.”
His eyes narrow. He’s not buying it. “You think someone’s in there.”
Heat flames in my cheeks, and I sigh. “Well, you weren’t exactly quiet earlier.”
He purses his lips, fighting a laugh, and drags his gaze up to the ceiling with a slow nod. After a moment, he steps away from the island and heads down the hall.
From the shadows just outside his bedroom, he turns back toward me. Our eyes meet, and he nudges the door open with his arm, careful not to touch anything with his hands, dough-covered fingers curled inward.
My eyes flick away from his and scan his room.
It’s…empty.
I swallow.
So, he sent her away. I must’ve missed it when I was in the bath earlier.
At the end of the hall, his eyes hold mine for several seconds, the air thick between us. “There was no one here, Opal. I didn’t realize you were home.”
Slowly he moves back to me, his feet dragging across the floor with heavy footsteps, and when he reappears in the kitchen light, his cheeks are stained pink. Probably from the heat radiating off the stove, but maybe it’s embarrassment.
Because…
“Oh.”
It lands for me finally, what he’s saying. Relief that has no business in this conversation touches every part of my body.
“Oh,” he repeats, his voice a flat, knowing echo as he meets my eyes briefly before returning his focus to our dinner.
Heavy silence settles between us. Minutes pass, but it feels like hours. Finally, I clear my throat.
“You were…loud.”
“Well, I’m very good.” It’s a joke, I think, but hot honey swims through my veins as he looks up at me from behind hooded brows.
“And I thought I was alone.” Then he lifts his chin just a bit farther, looking at me more fully.
“Trust me, if I had a woman in there, you’d know it. She’d have been loud, too.”
There’s that arrogance that’s been missing from his gaze.
“Are you…loud, Opal? In bed?”
My heart plummets, jaw drops. “You did not just ask me that. It’s none of your business.”
He doesn’t say anything, just watches me. The pink is gone from his cheeks now. The heat has transferred entirely to mine.
“Were you…watching…something?” The question slips from my lips, and I’m completely unprepared for the way it feels in this room, the way my skin burns under its weight.
He’s visibly fighting a smile. “You didn’t answer my question because it’s none of my business, and now you’re asking me if I was watching porn? Really? How is that fair?”
I rest my chin in my palm, silent.
After a beat, he runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah. Yeah, Opal, I was. Again, I thought I was alone. You got home early, remember?” He plants both palms heavy on the island, leaning his weight toward me so he’s almost looming. “Your turn. Tell me.”
When I don’t answer right away, when I can’t summon a single word from my lips, his voice drops an octave, dragging out his next question. “Opal. How loud do you get?”
I puff out a breath. “Will.”
“Yes?” He flutters his lashes at me.
My shoulders slump. “I don’t know. Not very loud, I guess.” I rush to add, “Not like you, apparently.”
There’s another smile on his face, though this one’s different. It does something deep inside my core.
But thankfully, the torture ends there as a heavy silence envelops us.
I watch as he arranges the crusts on the island counter.
He carries the pot over and places it down on a folded towel, spooning and smoothing the sauce with precision.
When he’s finished, one of the pizzas has extra sauce—the perfect amount really—though he doesn’t point it out and I can’t bring myself to ask.
As he drizzles the olive oil, a bit drips on his knuckle, and he swipes it away with his lips absentmindedly, leaving behind a shimmery glaze on his skin.
His focus is almost…impressive. If he weren’t Will, I might be impressed.
“I’m a CPA, by the way,” he says, still lost in the process. It’s almost like he’s unaware he’s speaking.
“Random subject change.” I’d nearly forgotten about that conversation. “That’s not an accountant?”
He doesn’t look up. “It’s a little bit different.”
“Still not a chef.”
“Still more of a chef than you.” He sprinkles the sauce with fistfuls of mozzarella cheese before spreading the toppings on each pizza. One gets sausage and chopped green peppers, and the other one—the one with the perfect amount of sauce—he covers with pepperoni, banana peppers, and green olives.
He remembered my favorite kind of pizza.
And how much sauce I like.
I force the realizations away. We ate pizza together at least once a week for most of our lives. This isn’t revolutionary. Chill out, Opal.
“For all you know, I worked at a restaurant before I moved back. Maybe there are people in Atlanta devastated that they’ll never eat my food again.”
“No.” His response comes without hesitation. “You worked at a school, same as now. Fourth grade, but…sixth for a year, right?” He closes one eye, thinking, and when he meets my gaze moments later, there’s no need for confirmation he’s right. “You were always going to be a teacher.”
I twist my lips, trying to decide how much longer to keep fighting with him. “Fine. I’m not a chef either.”
He turns to put the pizzas in the oven but stops, looking at me. “You never even liked to cook.”
He’s not wrong.
He slips one pizza in the oven, then the other. “I’ve always sort of assumed whoever you end up with will be someone who knows his way around a kitchen. At least, I hoped so. Or else you’d starve.” He closes the oven door and adds, “Besides, I’ve met hangry Opal and I wouldn’t wish her on anyone.”
The words sit with me, the fact that he’s put any thought into it at all. Who I’ll end up with and what he might be like.
Strange. This man who was once just as hopeless in the kitchen as I am.
“I wouldn’t starve,” I argue, clearing the fuzzy thoughts from my head. “I’m much too resourceful for that. I’d just eat cereal or peanut butter and jelly for every meal.”
“So, basically, the way you live now,” he says, setting the timer.
“Exactly. Only until I find my chef husband.”
He watches me from the corner of his eyes, still half turned toward the stove. Finally, he sighs. “Well, I hate to be the one to break it to you, Teach, but you moved to the wrong town for that.”
I blink, feigning shock. “You mean Clinton isn’t booming with five-star restaurants? Someone should really update the brochures.”
He licks a bit of sauce from his thumb. Slowly. Without thought.